I often dream of the fall.

The slow and graceful escape from the hands of gravity and the float that supports my legs and arms as I drift toward the ground.  The mall in Bangkok and the 7 story atrium that twisted and screwed its way toward the ceiling and the freedom that I found in the fall from such heights.

The unfinished artwork and stories that followed it are now lost in the depths of twisted scribbles in journals, housed in boxes, in stacks, in the living room.

This spring has been enveloped by the scent of decay.  And we’d all be fools to argue that we didn’t see it coming.  The conversations that had been held, the cards that had been pulled, and the endless thoughts that ran through each of our minds… of things coming to an end and new possibilities potentially beginning… this season has surely been ripe.

The weddings that have been planned knew no place in their registers for events such as these that have followed.

I’ve managed to go so far as to create a new story: the ending of the stream of breath.  And all too soon seen the consequences that have manifested themselves.  I’ve blamed my relentless partying on past events, and in turn become the witness of some new tragedy.

Only weeks ago , sitting with you there at the bottom of Main, I was trying to find the words to reassure you that there were fresh beginnings and epic transformations that would show themselves as soon as the gray clouds cleared from the horizon.  But I was telling you the only truth that I knew then.  Because I haven’t quite figured how to separate the real from the fiction. 

Because now, this week, I am the one who fell.

Eyes stricken, and ears that can’t stand the sounds of the street party any longer.

Lips letting loose.

The slow and graceful escape from gravity… The inevitable rush… The speed that confuses the dreaming mind, is something we only know in our waking wanderings.

The bridge and the wind.  The way it must have felt to go rushing and not gliding towards the waiting tide.  And the impact and the way in which the water must have mutated you right there.  The fondling arms of our fair aquatics and your fragile frame.

The loss.

The dream.  My graceful fall from grace.  The gigantic Christmas tree and the waiting arms of every coniferous bow that waited with its fingers outstretched.  The way each and every arm broke my fall so slowly.  And the eventual impact, so graceful… The slide…

And my unscathed body…

That stood, to walk away.